{"id":14923,"date":"2011-04-15T09:53:07","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T14:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=14923"},"modified":"2011-04-15T20:49:56","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T01:49:56","slug":"2011-nba-playoff-series-betting-preview-chicago-bulls-vs-indiana-pacers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/2011-nba-playoff-series-betting-preview-chicago-bulls-vs-indiana-pacers-14923\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 NBA Playoff Series Betting Preview: Chicago Bulls vs. Indiana Pacers"},"content":{"rendered":"

#1 Chicago Bulls (62-20) vs. #8 Indiana Pacers (37-45)<\/strong>
\n2011 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs – First Round<\/strong>
\nSeries Price: Bulls -4000 \/ Pacers +2000<\/p>\n

Click for latest NBA lines<\/a><\/p>\n

Series Schedule<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Game 1 –<\/strong> Saturday, April 16, Indiana at Chicago, 1:00 pm, ESPN\/ESPN3D
\nGame 2 –<\/strong> Monday, April 18, Indiana at Chicago, 9:30 pm, TNT
\nGame 3 –<\/strong> Thursday, April 21, Chicago at Indiana, 7:00 pm, NBA TV
\nGame 4 –<\/strong> Saturday, April 23, Chicago at Indiana, 2:30 pm, TNT
\nGame 5 *<\/strong> Tuesday, April 26, Indiana at Chicago, TBD, TBD
\nGame 6 *<\/strong> Thursday, April 28, Chicago at Indiana, TBD, TBD
\nGame 7 *<\/strong> Saturday, April 30, Indiana at Chicago, TBD, TNT<\/p>\n

All Times Eastern
\n* if necessary<\/p>\n

\"Bulls
Indiana's Danny Granger thinks the Bulls are beatable if you stop MVP candidate Derrick Rose.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The top-seeded Chicago Bulls (62-20) have gone on to win the NBA championship every other time they have totaled 60 wins or more in team history, although this group has yet to win a playoff series together.\u00a0 The eighth-seeded Indiana Pacers (37-45) figure to be Chicago\u2019s first postseason victims, but they did find a way to hand the Bulls their only Central Division loss during the regular season.<\/p>\n

Indiana\u2019s leading scorer Danny Granger (20.5 points per game) has proclaimed that the way to stop the Central champs is to stop NBA MVP favorite Derrick Rose, conjuring up the notion that somewhere out there the \u201cRose Rules\u201d exist much like they did for Hall of Famer Michael Jordan before he won his first title.\u00a0 However, Granger has very little playoff experience himself, participating in only one series back in his rookie year (2005-06) when the Pacers lost 4-2 to New Jersey in the first round.\u00a0 He is now the veteran leader simply trying to give his young teammates a boost.<\/p>\n

Rose got most of the confidence he needed to become a star two years ago when he was a rookie, helping the seventh-seeded Bulls take the then-defending league champion Boston Celtics to seven games before bowing out in the first round himself.\u00a0 Chicago covered the spread in the first two games before going 1-3-1 vs. the line in the last five.\u00a0 Four of those games went to overtime and five of them were decided by three points or less with the OVER going 6-1.<\/p>\n

Despite making the playoffs again last year as the #8 seed, Chicago continued to struggle defensively under former head coach Vinny Del Negro and won just one game against LeBron James and the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers.\u00a0 The Bulls surrendered an average of more than 106 points per game to Cleveland in the first round, and Del Negro was then fired and replaced with former Boston assistant coach Tom Thibodeau.<\/p>\n

While Rose has certainly been spectacular during his MVP campaign, Thibodeau deserves a ton of credit for turning Chicago into one of the best defensive teams in the league and is a bona fide Coach of the Year candidate.\u00a0 The Bulls ranked second in points allowed (91.3 per game) and first in defensive field-goal percentage (43) during the regular season and will look to kick that up a notch in the postseason, when games tend to slow down and points are at a premium.<\/p>\n

Indiana started to turn things around when head coach Jim O\u2019Brien was fired and replaced by assistant Frank Vogel on January 30.\u00a0 Since then, the Pacers have gone 20-18 to grab the final postseason spot in the East.\u00a0 Chicago has won more games since March 2 though, going 21-2 including a current nine-game winning streak to show how far apart these teams really are.\u00a0 The Bulls have won six of the last eight meetings both straight-up and against the spread over the past two seasons and might lose a game before advancing to the second round.<\/p>\n

Series Pick: Chicago Bulls (-4000 at Bookmaker) in 5<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that you have read this NBA betting preview featuring the Bulls & Pacers, check out the NBA odds on this and all the playoff series to compare the best lines at multiple sportsbooks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

#1 Chicago Bulls (62-20) vs. #8 Indiana Pacers (37-45) 2011 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs – First Round Series Price: Bulls -4000 \/ Pacers +2000 Click for latest NBA lines Series Schedule Game 1 – Saturday, April 16, Indiana at Chicago, 1:00 pm, ESPN\/ESPN3D Game 2 – Monday, April 18, Indiana at Chicago, 9:30 pm, TNT […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":9310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[4856,174,4672,4673,4674,4438,565,4439,1985,4857,4858,4440,4859],"class_list":["post-14923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-bulls-pacers-playoff-series-preview","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-first-round","tag-first-round-betting","tag-first-round-picks","tag-free-pro-basketball-pick","tag-indiana-pacers","tag-nba-basketball-odds","tag-nba-picks","tag-nba-playoff-betting","tag-nba-playoff-picks","tag-pro-basketball-betting","tag-series-price"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14923"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14953,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923\/revisions\/14953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}